No human remains found in latest Jimmy Hoffa search, police say

Published: Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012 9:27 a.m. CDT

By Elisha Anderson — Detroit Free Press

DETROIT (MCT) — No human remains were found in a soil sample taken from underneath a Detroit-area shed on Friday, bringing no new clues to the 37-year search for the body of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

“We never thought it was Jimmy Hoffa,” Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said Tuesday. “But after the time and effort put into it, you have hope that there’s something there. But of course we’re glad that it’s not, because that (would have) meant some poor soul had been there all these years.”

The Roseville Police Department said in a news release that it is concluding the investigation.

“Our department just received the soil sample report from Michigan State University, after a battery of tests, the samples submitted for examination showed no signs of human decomposition,” the release said.

An MSU forensic anthropologist had analyzed 4-inch samples of mud and clay drilled Friday from underneath a shed behind the one-story Roseville house in the 18700 block of Florida, northwest of 12 Mile and Gratiot.

A tip from an outstate Michigan man about a previous owner of the home — whom he described as a bookmaker for the late Anthony Giacalone, a Detroit Mafia captain and suspect in Hoffa’s disappearance — led to the search. The tipster said the homeowner was up all night pouring concrete the day Hoffa disappeared.

Police said the timeline didn’t mesh with Hoffa’s disappearance. The person the tipster referenced didn’t own the home until three years after Hoffa disappeared, police said. Another person has since bought the home, and she has declined comment on the search.

Hoffa vanished from a restaurant parking lot in Oakland County in 1975, touching off one of the 20th-century’s most enduring mysteries.